


Since You've Been Around

by dawnperhaps



Series: Audio Posts [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnperhaps/pseuds/dawnperhaps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susurrus. Noun. A quiet whisper or murmuring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Since You've Been Around

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the tune of "Since You've Been Around" by Rosie Thomas.  
> Also written for the Sabriel Week Daily Word Challenge.

Gabriel comes back into Sam’s life without any bravado.  Instead, he appears with the quiet whisper of wings, materializing in Sam’s motel room one day with a quick gasp and shocked glance around the room.  Before the angel can say anything, he doubles over and sinks to his knees, and Sam is on his feet before he even fully registers the situation.  While Dean grabs a shotgun and a vile of holy water, Sam darts to the archangel’s side like he knows nothing about hunting or possession, like he hasn’t been skirting the line between PTSD and complete insanity for the past several months.  Dean snaps at him to get back, but Sam barely hears him, staring into shocked golden eyes and knowing - without the tests, without the interrogation - that this is Gabriel, the same Gabriel who turned his life upside down in the best and worst kind of ways so many years ago, before Hell, before Purgatory, before Castiel’s fall from every kind of grace.  Even the smell of him is out of place in the personal post-apocalyptic world that is Sam’s mind.  Sugar and ozone - sweetness and angels; there’s no place for either in Sam’s fractured life.  And yet he’s here, staring at Sam with all the unbridled emotion they’d always hid behind teasing and snark, and once again everything turns on its head. 

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” Gabriel tells him, and Sam wants to tell him to shut up, to call him ‘Sammy’ or ‘kiddo,’ make a smart comment about his pretty hair, and tell him to get over his little pity party. But he doesn’t, not at first.  He’s different, too. 

Gabriel’s sorry because he pushed Sam into Lucifer.  He’s sorry because he made Sam live through Dean’s murder a hundred times over.  He’s sorry because there’s nothing he can do to fix Sam’s head.  He tries to be sorry that he isn’t one of the more powerful archangels, one that might have the juice to help, but Sam doesn’t let him finish that thought.  


Dean complains that Gabriel’s only complicating things, that all he’s _ever_ done is complicate things and push them towards their unavoidable fates, and maybe it’s true, but despite the spinning and the loss of control, Sam finally begins to feel alive again.  There are nights when Sam feels like he’s drowning and Gabriel takes him away and holds him steady, slowly breathing his sanity back into him.  When Gabriel kisses him, he offers Sam the first choice he’s had since he fell into the pit, and Sam grabs onto it like a lifeline.  Gabriel isn’t Lucifer, Gabriel isn’t his destiny, but Sam doesn’t care.  Gabriel saw all of him during the time in which Sam was afraid no one would ever even try to look, and Sam chooses him.  He’s terrified, so scared to make the same bad decisions over again, to fall for some kind of trick, but all he can see in Gabriel is an affection (he doesn’t dare call it more) that’s unconditional. 

Sam chooses that.  


It’s not good yet.  Maybe it won’t be good.  There are days when even Gabriel can’t handle the torture Sam went through at his brother’s hands and Sam feels like he might not ever stop spinning, caught up in the game of the higher powers.  But Lucifer is quieter these days and Sam would rather spin than fall.  There’s a quiet whisper of hope in the back of his mind, somehow louder than Lucifer and Sam’s self-hatred, and it sounds a lot like wings. 

_susurrus. noun. a quiet whisper or murmuring.  
_


End file.
